Background: There is uncertainty about the impact of internet use on mental health in older adults. Moreover, there is very little known specifically about the impact of particular purposes of internet use. Objective: This study aims to investigate the longitudinal relationship between two distinct concepts of mental health with the frequency of internet use among older adults: the moderating role of socioeconomic position (SEP) and the association between specific purposes of internet use. Methods: Longitudinal fixed and random effects (27,507 person-years) models were fitted using waves 6-8 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing to examine the relationship between different aspects of internet use (frequency and purpose) and two mental health outcomes (depression and life satisfaction). The potential moderating effect of SEP on these associations was tested using interaction terms. Results: Infrequent internet use (monthly or less vs daily) was predictive of deteriorating life satisfaction (β=−0.512; P=.02) but not depression. Education and occupational class had a moderating effect on the association between frequency of internet use and mental health. The associations were stronger in the highest educational group in both depression (P=.09) and life satisfaction (P=.02), and in the highest occupational group in life satisfaction (P=.05) only. Using the internet for communication was associated with lower depression (β=−0.24; P=.002) and better life satisfaction (β=.97; P<.001), whereas those using the internet for information access had worse life satisfaction (β=−0.86; P<.001) compared with those who did not. Conclusions: Policies to improve mental health in older adults should encourage internet use, especially as a tool to aid communication.

In this review article, we detail a small but growing literature in the field of health geography that uses longitudinal data to determine a life course component to the neighbourhood effects thesis. For too long, there has been reliance on cross-sectional data to test the hypothesis that where you live has an effect on your health and well-being over and above your individual circumstances. We identified 53 articles that demonstrate how neighbourhood deprivation measured at least 15 years prior affects health and well-being later in life using the databases Scopus and Web of Science. We find a bias towards US studies, the most common being the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Definition of neighbourhood and operationalization of neighbourhood deprivation across most of the included articles relied on data availability rather than a priori hypothesis. To further progress neighbourhood effects research, we suggest that more data linkage to longitudinal datasets is required beyond the narrow list identified in this review. The limited literature published to date suggests an accumulation of exposure to neighbourhood deprivation over the life course is damaging to later life health, which indicates improving neighbourhoods as early in life as possible would have the greatest public health improvement.

Despite improvements in life expectancy, there is uncertainty on whether the increase in years of healthy life expectancy has kept pace. In this paper we explore whether there is empirical support for the expansion of morbidity hypothesis in the population aged 25–64 living in England. Nationally representative cohorts born between 1945 and 1980 are constructed from repeated annual cross-sections of the Health Survey for England, 1991–2014. Later-born cohorts at a given age have the same or higher prevalence of self-reported bad general health and long-term illness, self-reported high blood pressure (in men), self-reported and objectively-measured diabetes, circulatory illnesses, clinical hypertension, and overweight BMI. We also find that healthy life expectancies (in the sense of absence of each of these problems) at age 25 have increased at a slower pace than life expectancy between 1993 and 2013. Our findings lend support to the expansion of morbidity hypothesis and point to increased future demand for specific healthcare services at younger ages.

This paper provides a rapid response analysis of the changing geographies of ethnic diversity and segregation in England and Wales using Census data covering the last 30 years (1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021), a period of significant social, economic and political change. Presenting the first detailed analysis of 2021 Census small area ethnic group data, we find that the growth of ethnic diversity at the national level is mirrored across residential neighbourhoods. Increasing numbers of neighbourhoods are home to a substantial mix of people from different ethnic groups, and this growing neighbourhood ethnic diversity has been spatially diffusing across all regions of England and Wales. We argue that to understand the ethnic mosaic across England and Wales, it is more illuminating to consider mix than majority: places labelled as ‘minority‐majority’ are, in fact, ethnically diverse spaces, home to sizable proportions of people from many ethnic groups. Increasing ethnic diversity is matched by decreasing residential segregation, for all ethnic groups—majority and minority.

To determine whether comparable prospective and retrospective data present the same association between childhood and life course exposures and mid-life wellbeing. Prospective data is taken from the 1958 UK National Child Development Study at age 50 in 2008 and earlier sweeps (n = 8,033). Retrospective data is taken from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing at ages 50–55 from a life history interview in 2007 (n = 921). There is a high degree of similarity in the direction of association between childhood exposures that have been prospectively collected in National Child Development Study and retrospectively collected in English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and wellbeing outcomes in mid-life. However, the magnitude of these associations is attenuated substantially by the inclusion of measurements, which are difficult or impossible to capture retrospectively, and are only available in prospective data, such as childhood poverty, cognitive ability, and indices of social and emotional adjustment. The findings on the one hand provide some reassurance to the growing literature using life history data to determine life course associations with later life wellbeing. On the other hand, the findings show an overestimation in the retrospective data, in part, arising from the absence in life history data of childhood measures that are not well suited to retrospective collection.

The importance of neighbourhood on individual health is widely documented. Less is known about the relative role of objective and subjective reports of neighbourhood conditions, how their effect on health changes as people age, and whether they moderate each other's impact on health. This study uses the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to determine whether older adults report worse self-rated health as they age, and whether this differs between objective and subjective measures of neighbourhood. ELSA data contain 53,988 person-years across six waves collected biannually between 2002 and 03 and 2012 and 13. Objective neighbourhood conditions are measured by the 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation, and subjective neighbourhood conditions are captured by a summative neighbourhood dissatisfaction score. We find both objective and subjective neighbourhood composite scores independently predict poor health. There is no change over time in the probability of reporting poor health by baseline objective or subjective neighbourhood scores, suggesting neighbourhood effects do not compound as older adults age. There is no moderating effect of area dissatisfaction on the relationship between neighbourhood deprivation and health. The findings provide little support for causal neighbourhood effects operating in later life and indicate different causal pathways through which objective and subjective neighbourhood deprivation impact on health.